It can be hard to know which players to keep, and which players to dump, if you're running a major-league baseball team. (Those are the only options; keep or dump. Players who are not kept are all dumped.) But the wisdom of crowds has never led anybody astray, so the New York Daily News has asked its readers whom to keep and whom to dump. There are a lot of Yankees that the crowd would like to dump:

What would it look like if the Yankees actually consider moving Alex Rodriguez this winter?

Before Derek Jeter fractured his ankle on Saturday, talk of the Yankees centered on Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez is in a horrible slump and, unless he has a spectacular turnaround this month, baseball writers, fans and unnamed sources will spend the winter speculating about whether the Yankees will trade him. That, however, would be incredible. You see, the Yankees owe Rodriguez $126 million over the next five years*. Also, he has a no-trade clause. So, like swallowing a whole bunch of diamonds, trading A-Rod would be difficult, painful, and insanely expensive.

*This includes two reasonably reachable $6 million bonuses for home runs no. 660 and no. 714. It does not include three other $6 million bonuses for home runs no. 755, 762 and 763.

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Ben and Sam discuss Game Three of the Yankees-Orioles ALDS, the decision to pinch-hit for Alex Rodriguez, and A-Rod's future in New York, then talk about why the Stephen Strasburg debate won't go away.

Ben and Sam discuss Game Three of the Yankees-Orioles ALDS, the decision to pinch-hit for Alex Rodriguez, and A-Rod's future in New York, then talk about why the Stephen Strasburg debate won't go away.

In the defining move of his career, Joe Girardi went with his gut. It worked.

The questions addressed to Joe Girardi in his pre-game press conference looked a lot like the ones he fielded several hours later, after the Yankees had come from behind to beat Baltimore 3-2 in 12 innings and take a 2-1 series lead. Both times, the emphasis was on Alex Rodriguez, with a bit of Raul Ibanez. Girardi’s responses about A-Rod earlier in the day weren’t very revealing. But by the time the second presser started, the questions almost didn’t have to be asked. Girardi’s in-game actions had already supplied the answers.

Health can play a big part in which teams win and which go home. In the AL East and AL Central, lost WARP can help explain the standings.

Driven by deep data sets, sophisticated technology, and collaboration between skilled statistical and scouting staffs, major-league teams have become increasingly adept at projecting player performance. In some respects, assembling a roster is the easy part of building a winning team. The hard part is making sure that roster remains intact. Speaking at Internet Week in New York earlier this year, Athletics General Manager Billy Beane stressed the importance of predicting and preventing injuries:

The "we" debate is a weirdly durable one among those of us who enjoy meta-baseball arguments, those fights that aren't so much about the game as they are about how we interact with it. You'll see the topic spring up on Twitter every so often, as surely as you will discussion of the serial comma, The Wave, and whether Budweiser is an acceptable alternative to water for adult humans. By "the 'we' debate," I mean the question of whether it is "OK" for fans to refer to a team as "we." "We won last night, but it was awfully close;" "We need some power in the heart of the order if we're going to make any noise in the playoffs;" "We stink."

My experience of the two sides of the debate is that many people feel strongly that the "we" is illegitimate, a putting on airs, a usurpation of the rightful ownership of the victories of the men who actually play the game. Those who say "we," by contrast, seem often to not be wedded to the word so much as they are following long-formed mental pathways. They know they're not on the team, and I imagine most of them will admit that no matter how loud they cheer, they don't really have any effect on the field. But they say "we" and they see their use of the word as harmless. The players know full well who drove in the game-winning run, after all, and the first general manager who will be fooled into giving a fan a seven-figure deal to yell real loud hasn't been born yet.

Alex Rodriguez had an extraordinary prime, but he's aging much more like an average player, and that's not good news for the Yankees.

When Major League Baseball’s All-Stars convened in Kansas City earlier this week, one notable name was nowhere to be found: Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez has been an All-Star 14 times, more than any other active player. He leads all active players in career value, according to traditional stats (HR, R, RBI) and advanced stats (WARP) alike. Only a handful of players in history have done as much to help their teams win. But career accomplishments mean only so much. To be considered one of the best players in baseball, you have to continue to play like one. And lately, A-Rod hasn’t looked a lot like an All-Star.

Rodriguez won his third AL MVP award in 2007. Since then, his performance has declined in five straight seasons. Most players can expect to see their numbers take a tumble after an MVP season, but A-Rod’s decline goes beyond routine regression. He’s not coming back down to earth. He’s falling off the face of it.

Jason Heyward gets an earful from Yankees fans in right field after an Alex Rodriguez homer.

Interesting things happen when home runs are hit to the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium. In Game 4 of the 2010 ALCS, Robinson Cano hit a home run there, just beyond the reach of Rangers right fielder Nelson Cruz. That home run made the score 1-0, Yankees. The Rangers went on to win the game 10-3, so the home run itself was meaningless. (Well, it might have had meaning for Cano). But the aftermath of the home run made animated GIF history:

The tater trots for April 20: two inside-the-park home runs, plus an invalid trot from David Ortiz!

What do you do when two different players each hit an inside-the-park home run on the same night? Normally, one is good enough for Home Run of the Day, but how do you choose? And what if they both come on a once-in-a-century day where two storied teams are wearing fantastic uniforms from generations past while celebrating the birthday of a park like Fenway? Especially when there are six different home runs in that game? And let's not forget a pair of home runs from last year's sad sack story Adam Dunn, or home run number 631(good enough for fifth all-time) from Alex Rodriguez?

Something peculiar happened during the most recent National Football League season: four quarterbacks threw for more than 4,900 yards. An unprecedented event given that two quarterbacks had accomplished the feat in 30 years theretofore. The increased reliance on, and perfection of, the forward pass has led to an assault on the record books, akin to the earlier offensive explosion in baseball. There are no rumblings of wrongdoing in football—at least, around these new levels of performance—but then again, there weren’t during the early phases of baseball’s offensive breakout, either. Even heading forward, don’t expect a congressional hearing, or columnists pontificating about lost innocence while urging a nation to grieve and revolt. Because, as one intrepid—and sadly, unremembered—soul put it: nobody cares about football stats.

The inverse is true of baseball statistics. Anyone reading Prospectus is no stranger to numbers, or to the countless reasons why people are attracted to baseball’s numbers. At some point the large, round numbers became in-built measuring sticks. If a player hit 500 home runs over his career he must have been one of the best sluggers in history. A player with 3,000 hits or 300 wins demonstrated the perfect equilibrium between longevity and quality throughout his career. Exceptions existed before science entered the picture, but these rules were simple—and simple sells.